


arizona

by BlindSwandive



Series: Masquerade fills [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Belts, Corporal Punishment, Domestic Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive/pseuds/BlindSwandive
Summary: Sam runs away on Dean's watch.John makes Dean wield the belt in punishment to them both.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Masquerade fills [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1280822
Comments: 17
Kudos: 76
Collections: SPN_Masquerade Spring 2020





	arizona

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingstocarryon (wings_of_crows)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wings_of_crows/gifts).



> For my girlfriend's delicious prompt in Spn-Masquerade. Only posted half during the event but it's finished now!!

It was raining when they found him. Dean didn't even know it could rain in Arizona. But apparently when it rained there, it poured, throwing water and mud from the sky like some kind of fucked up Biblical plague. Monsoon season, Sam would tell him later. Once he started speaking to him again. 

That was going to take a while. Dean wouldn't blame him.

Sam had disappeared, run away into the night, while Dad was out on a hunt. Dean was 18 now and supposed to be responsible enough to keep an eye on shit like this, keep his kid brother in hand, but Dad didn't seem to realize how stubborn Sammy could be when he put his mind to it. 

Dean thought his father would beat the shit out of him when he got back, but he'd just gone quiet, which was worse. Then he'd grabbed Dean by the shoulders and shook him, said, "This isn't over." Dean felt sick.

It took them two weeks to find him, squatting outside of town in an abandoned pre-fab with a dog, sick on cheap pizza and pop, living by the light of a badly rigged desk lamp. He'd fought coming back, but Dad had grabbed him by the shirt collar and dragged him out kicking and screaming, knocking over the lamp and smashing the bulb on the way. After that the only light came when the lightning cracked open the sky, lighting up the rain and the flat landscape and their terrified faces--all three, haunted--in grey-blue, thunder shattering around them.

Dad had thrown Sam face-first into the car, and Dean had climbed in after, held onto Sam like an anchor or a prisoner, he wasn't sure which. He held Sam tight, crushed to his chest, the whole way back to the motel, and Sam had slowly gone from struggling to sobbing to clinging to him just as tight. 

Dean hadn't cried, but it was close. He'd buried his face in Sam's shaggy mess of hair and just breathed him in, clutched him like a lifeline. "Don't ever do that to me again," he'd begged. "Never."

Dad had had to drag them both back out of the car when they got back to the motel. Dean didn't want to know what was next.

"If you don't come in, you're doing it in the parking lot," Dad had growled, and Sam had started struggling all over again, panicked.

Dean shushed him, clinging by his fingernails to something approaching calm. "Come on, Sammy, gotta get out. Let's get inside, get dry. Come on..."

But it was taking too long, apparently, because Dad went around the other side and pulled Sam out by the hair, slamming the door behind him and shoving him face first into the car. "Dean!" he barked, and Dean scrambled to come around.

When he got there, Dad had already unthreaded his belt from his waist, holding it loose by the buckle, like a whip.

"Dad," he'd said, shaking his head, "Dad, please... Don't, he just messed up, he--"

" _You_ messed up," Dad said, flat, hollow. "It was your responsibility to watch him, to keep him in line. This is your mess, too." And with that, he shoved the buckle into Dean's hand. "You're going to be the one to clean it up."

Dean paled.

Dean stood shaking in the rain, while Sam trembled, soaked to the skin, and their father stared them down.

"You do it," he threatened finally, eerie calm, "or I do it twice as long and twice as hard. And you'll be taking a trip to help Bobby for the next month."

Dean swallowed. That was too much. He nodded, eyes blurring--from the rain, just the rain--and gripped the buckle, stepping back.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he mumbled, and raised the belt.

Dean faltered, glancing between Sam's huddled body and their dad. "How many?"

"Until I say."

Dean nodded, felt like he'd swallowed a cherry bomb. Any minute it would tear him apart from the inside out. He closed his eyes and tried to just feel the cool water streaking down his face, tried to ignore the burning fuse, the ache in his gut.

He swung blind.

Sam let out a yelp and Dean felt it like a stab wound. He swung again, lighter, but it landed limp and his father barked at him to do it _right_ or _else._ He swallowed at the lump in his throat and reluctantly opened his eyes, tightening his grip.

He wished he could be between Sam and the belt, wished he could will the pain into his own skin. There was nothing he wouldn't endure to save Sam. Nothing.

"Let me--let me take the licks," he pleaded. "It's my fault, right? So belt me, not him." He tried to offer the belt back to his father.

Dad folded his arms and stared him down.

Dean gave first, broke and looked to the asphalt below, wet and gritty with sand and mud. Their father knew as well as he did; Dean might not like getting smacked, but nothing hurt him like seeing Sam hurt, or like being taken away from him, sent to where he couldn't protect him. 

That was the point.

Dean dug the heel of his palm into one eye. Yeah, so maybe he was crying. 

He tried to say he was sorry again, tried to beg Sam's forgiveness, to tell him he loved him, but the words wouldn't come. They usually didn't.

Dean took a deep breath and shifted his stance, stared at the middle of Sam's back, and thought of learning to throw a ball in school. He relaxed his shoulder, tried to clear his mind, and swung.

Sam yowled like a cat, and that was the end of a clear mind. He could imagine the welts rising under the wet flannel, his blotchy red face, the tears he'd be hiding up against the window and he clenched his jaw against begging again. 

Dean laid in five as lightly as he could without getting called out, hoping the wet smack would make it sound worse than it was. Sam's fingers curled hard on the edge of the door frame and he started muttering, unintelligible through the rain, but it crested into yelps each time the belt landed.

Five more.

Ten more.

Sam was hiccuping, now, and Dean began to catch snatches of his muttered tirade: "...not fair... never enough... always do..."

And then, like a knife wound, "Hate you. Hate you both."

Dean thought he'd throw up. His shoulder seized and he stumbled when the swing wouldn't come.

"Please, Dad," he begged, "please, enough..."

His father only said, "Get on with it."

"Sammy," Dean said, dam breaking, "Sammy, I'm so sorry..."

Sam let out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a bellow, a wordless cry of anger and pain and grief.

_"Get on with it, boy."_

Dean swallowed a sob and thumped his left fist into his frozen shoulder, trying to force it loose. He tried imagining throwing a ball again but it was too absurd, all sunshine and green grass, impossible to get his brain wrapped around here in the wet and the dark and the mud. He finally switched the buckle to his left hand and could feel the deep indent it had left in his right palm, could imagine the angry red impression and wished it had burned him like a brand. He wanted it to bleed. He gripped tight so it would dig into his left palm, too, then swung the belt backhand and artless, and too hard. 

Sam howled, and Dean tried to swallow it like sin, tried to burn it onto his own body. _"My fault,"_ he thought, and hated it deep, hated himself. _"My fault. My penance."_ He swung again, harder, and harder again until Sam's voice cracked high and sharp.

He suddenly wanted to hit Sam so hard that Sam would try to claw out his eyes when they stopped. Hit him so hard that Sam would leap on him from behind, kick out his knee, dig a forearm into his neck and choke out his breath until he collapsed on the pavement. Hit him so hard Sam would never run again.

Dean lost count of the strikes, just swung mindless, a machine of pain. But he took in every ugly sob and wail, every shocked and stabbing cry, etched them onto his bones and into his heart. He swallowed it like poison.

There was nothing but pain and wailing and boiling rage and the muddy rain.

His father shouting his name failed to penetrate, until finally the belt was wrenched out of his hand, and he was knocked over into the muck on the asphalt. He landed sprawled on his back and didn't move. 

The muscles in his shoulders felt like they were buzzing, still twitching with the cycle of swing and recoil.

Dimly Dean registered the splash of footsteps as Sam staggered into their motel room and slammed the door behind him. Dad nudged his leg once with a foot, made a few sounds that might have been words, but Dean couldn't really make them out, and anyway he wanted to drown like a hen in the rain, face to the sky.

Eventually his dad gave up and went inside.

The monsoon didn't drown him. And no one ran him over, and Sam didn't claw his eyes out or choke him to death or half to death. Disappointing. But Dean could eat himself alive over it all on his own.


End file.
